The James River crested 24 feet and 9 inches above flood stage on Sept. 30, 1870, flooding Main Street. (Photo courtesy The Valentine)
While 2020 isn’t yet done with us, the year is destined for the record books as one of Richmond’s most difficult, although another year — pandemics excepted — comes close. Within this awful yesteryear lie kernels for understanding our present.
Richmond’s post-Civil War Federal Reconstruction military rule ended on Jan. 25, 1870. Brig. Gen. Edward Canby oversaw the ceremonial firing of 100 guns in Capitol Square and surrendered his authority three days later.
Richmond’s Confederate-era politicians were out of office through death, resignation and removal. The General Assembly set about reorganizing the state government and passed the Enabling Act that empowered Gov. Gilbert Walker to appoint a new Council for Richmond to serve until summer elections. That body met on March 16, 1870, and chose as mayor Henry K. Ellyson, who was the publisher of the Richmond Dispatch, a former city sheriff and an ardent conservative.
But Mayor George Chahoon, a “Radical Republican” originally from upstate New York, refused to step down. This ignited what the newspapers variously called the Municipal War or the Radical Rebellion or the Bloody Interregnum.
Ellyson reinstated Chief of Police John Poe Jr., whom Chahoon had suspended after a drunk Poe had assaulted a Republican politician, and organized 200 white men into a special police force, detaching 25 of them to take City Hall. The Chahoonists dispersed following threats of gunfire.
Chahoon meanwhile holed up in the Italianate 17th Street Market House and swore in 25 African American men to serve as his special police under the command of “Colonel” Ben Scott, who was also Black.
One of Poe’s men, during a March 17 altercation at the Market, shot and killed John Henderson, a Black bystander.
Within this awful yesteryear lie kernels for understanding our present.
On Friday, March 18, 1870, Ellyson partisans cut off the Republicans’ food, water and gaslights, and then they cordoned off the building from visitors.
Poe desired to clear the streets, and Ellyson’s police attempted to enforce the order. This devolved into a melee between Black Chahoonists and white officers. Daniel Moore, an African American wounded by the resulting gunfire, lingered for a few hours before dying.
Canby, despite his newly minted promotion to major general, no longer wielded any authority in Richmond, but he nonetheless responded to a request by Chahoon, sending a few mounted horsemen to chase Poe’s police from the Market House.
The arrival of blue-coated troops at a time of civil unrest resembled the city’s occupation by Union forces five years earlier. Some onlookers took Poe’s men withdrawing toward their temporary 1441 E. Main St. headquarters as a Chahoon triumph. Crowds pursued the police, heckled them and threw bricks. The police turned and fired. The fusillade caused minor injuries, and Poe’s officers returned to quarters.
On March 20, Ellyson’s enforcers moved on the Jackson Ward fire station (now Gallery5) to arrest Ben Scott. The resulting fight caused the shooting death of Chahoonist policeman Richard O. Busch. The entire City Council and 250 officers formed the funeral procession.
Five people were ultimately killed by the street fighting — without any charges brought.
The whole mess went before the Virginia Court of Appeals that convened on the second floor of the State Capitol.
Richmonders expected a verdict on April 27. Before the proceedings began, however, the main girder underneath the courtroom snapped, and the floor gave way, sending judges, lawyers, press, observers, and Chahoon and Ellyson themselves tumbling toward the jagged chasm. People and debris spilled into the chamber beneath and kept crashing through into the House of Delegates. Sixty-two people were killed, and a plaque at the Capitol says 251 suffered injury, several of whom ultimately died.
The funerals went on for three days.
The courtroom floor of the Virginia State Capitol collapsed during an April trial, killing 62 and injuring 251. (Image courtesy Richard Bland Collection)
The mayoral trial reconvened in the domed and columned Robert Mills-designed City Hall, and on May 29, the Court of Appeals found for Ellyson and Poe, but Chahoon won the formal election — because Ellyson supporters stole a Jackson Ward voting box. This called for yet another election, but Ellyson demurred from running due to the taint of scandal. Instead, Richmond’s mayor became New Jersey-born and Petersburg-raised Roman Catholic Confederate veteran and editor Anthony Keily.
Republicans went out of office for generations.
On June 7, George Chahoon was arrested for forgery and attempting to defraud the commonwealth in a real estate case unrelated to the mayoral folderol. His sentence carried four years in the penitentiary. He finagled two more appeal trials — the last giving him two years. Gov. Walker then pardoned Chahoon — on the condition that he leave the state.
As if this weren’t enough, during this time, a severe drought afflicted Virginia. In September, rains around Lynchburg caused flooding there. When Richmonders received frantic telegraphic warnings, some thought the stories of property damage were exaggerated. There’d been no significant rain in Richmond for weeks.
Then, beginning at 11 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 30, and rising until 10 p.m. Saturday evening, the James River crested at 24 feet, 9 inches above flood stage. The roaring river carried huge timbers, parts of houses and mills, furniture, and carcasses. The waters submerged Shockoe deep enough that a schooner was used to ferry out marooned residents, the city’s gas and water works drowned, and Mayo’s bridge snapped in two. The floods affected 22 counties and took at least 100 lives, though apparently none in Richmond.
A Christmas Day fire destroyed the Hotel Spotswood and killed eight guests. (Photo courtesy The Valentine)
The Oct. 12 death of former Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Lexington, Virginia, plunged white Richmond into yet another period of mass mourning. The recent floods, however, had destroyed the Lexington warehouse storing new caskets, sending them shooting into the turbulence. A suitable casket was discovered near East Lexington, wedged in the fork of a tree. Carpenters retrieved and readied the casket for Lee’s internment at Washington College.
The women of the Hollywood Cemetery Memorial Association began immediate solicitation of funds to create a Lee monument.
Then, at 1:35 a.m. on Christmas Day, fire consumed the historic five-story Hotel Spotswood at Eighth and Main streets. Men and women startled from their beds jumped from windows. Ice-covered firefighters combated the conflagration. Eight guests died, and several were injured.
As for George Chahoon, he moved to upstate New York, where he married into wealth, wrote about water supply and birds, rose to run a prosperous timber and pulp company, served three terms as a New York state senator and outlived two wives. He died on July 29, 1934, aged 94, in Au Sable Forks, New York.
Material used for this column previously appeared in January 2004 and August 2008.
